


melody and silence

by andromeda3116



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, May the Fourth Exchange, Minor Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Mission Fic, Undercover as Married, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:50:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14531046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda3116/pseuds/andromeda3116
Summary: (Well, I’ve never prayed but tonight I'm on my knees.)“Mr. and Mrs. Sward,Thank you for registering to attend Sienar Research’s Technological Development Expo at Curamelle!Included in this missive is your unique, one-time access code to enter Corulag at our private docks, as well as your room assignment, an itinerary of the weekend’s panels and events, and a map of the convention space. We request that you arrive promptly at the time given to you with the access code, and register immediately upon arrival to receive your temporary keys and ID cards, which we request you carry on your person at all times.While the purpose of the conference is innovation and investment in intragalactic defense, we at Sienar Research believe that business and pleasure should not be mutually exclusive. In this spirit, your long weekend will be one of luxury and relaxation, with a member of our hospitality team assigned to attend to your every need, and you will have access to all of the convention’s amenities, including our spectacular rooftop bar, gaming floor, and spa.We look forward to meeting you and working together in the future to shine the light of our great Empire on all the galaxy.”





	melody and silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thereigning_lorelai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereigning_lorelai/gifts).



> written for the may-the-fourth exchange on tumblr, for thereigning-lorelai, who requested _an undercover mission fic where they have to pose as a couple but not yet have admitted their feelings for each other._
> 
> in case y'all hadn't heard, i am kind of _into_ fake relationship fics. 
> 
> it... got out of hand, and... quickly. i'm gonna go ahead and predict five parts.
> 
> many, many thanks to [melanadrood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melanoradrood/pseuds/melanoradrood) for beta-reading this for me!

_it's just sex and violence, melody and silence  
_ _I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down —_

 

Jyn did not feel that she was particularly well-suited to undercover work; however, somewhat alarmingly, Davits Draven, of all people, did. Or, well —

“You’re the best slicer we have,” he explained, barely paying attention to her. “Your skills at breaking locks and encryption are top-notch, and we need someone on this mission who can get into and back out of a high-security system without a trace. You’re the only one with those credentials.”

“Yeah, but I don’t exactly pass for Imperial high society,” she replied, and he waved it off.

“Princess Leia has agreed to help you look the part,” he said. “And you won’t be alone. You’re dismissed.”

Oh, good, she thought darkly. A makeover from the princess.

(On the plus side, Leia probably wasn’t going to enjoy it any more than she would; while the princess certainly knew _how_ to look the part, ever since the dissolution of the Senate had made rebellion a full-time job, she had converted her style to mostly function before form, retaining only a few of the trappings of femininity, and hadn’t been seen in a dress since the award ceremony. Jyn suspected that she was trying a little too hard to be taken seriously; Bodhi had a rather sad theory that she was trying to put Alderaan behind her, carving the pain out along with her past, with ruthless abandon that she would, one day, regret. Chirrut had agreed, but Leia only listened when she wanted to.)

_And you won’t be alone_ , Draven had said. She wondered, with a peculiar sort of knot twisting into her gut, what exactly that meant.

There weren’t a whole lot of people left in Intelligence, after all. And, considering that this would be her very first and hopefully very last undercover mission, it would only make sense to pair her with someone who had a lot of experience. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, except vaguely nauseous and deeply hesitant to look at the mission brief.

It turned out to be less… _specifically_ informative than she’d feared, since it was apparently expected that she would draft the scandocs for “their” alternate personalities, and mostly consisted of a run-down of what kind of people would be welcome at the event, and what sort of background she would need to concoct in order to get where she needed to go: wealthy, but preferably new money, and looking to network with Imperial-affiliated businessmen at a four-day convention on Corulag, where new designs for ships and weaponry would be unveiled by all sorts of mad scientists. The objective was to find out which of those designs the Empire was interested in or already funding, and hopefully head them off before they upgraded their fleet.

Suggestions for her character included merchant heiress, trophy wife, and/or budding investor looking for new technologies. An addendum said that it was “heavily encouraged” that she select an option that would allow for her and her partner to share a room or suite, and spend a lot of time together without raising any suspicions.

Merchant heiress was immediately struck out, because she didn’t want anyone asking any questions regarding her parentage, and she was not incredibly enthusiastic about trophy wife, either. 

The budding investor option, though… they could be business partners, sharing a suite — two separate rooms, maybe connected by a fresher, or something like that — and planning to jump into the lucrative shipbuilding industry. It could work.

And while it would still require sharing a suite for half a Corulagan week with… another member of the resistance, it would _not_ require sharing a room or holding hands or acting like anything other than completely professional business partners. It was perfect.

Until she mentioned it to Leia.

“Imperial industry is too rigid in its roles,” she explained, while pulling a trunk out from a cargo space underneath the floor of her room. “They don’t think much of women. Make your partner the businessman, be the trophy wife. No one pays attention to wives.”

Jyn scowled at the dress that Leia tossed her. “I don’t think I can pass for a trophy wife.”

“You’d be the only business _woman_ there,” Leia countered, tossing her another dress. “You’d draw too much attention.” Jyn cursed under her breath as she held up the newest dress — it was a floor-length periwinkle-blue thing with sheer netted sleeves, and its only saving grace was a modest cut. “Who’s your partner?”

“I don’t know, it doesn't looked like they've assigned anyone yet.”

“Probably Captain Andor,” Leia replied, blessedly too distracted to see Jyn wince. “He has the most experience with undercover work, although I don’t know how much time he’s spent in the Core. I think he even has a merchant identity, so you can probably co-opt it and save yourself some work.”

She had, in fact, already known that, and in the tiny little part of her brain that she tried to muffle and lock up, had already considered the name Katya Sward.

“Can you think of anyone else they might send me with?” she asked, and Leia paused, looking thoughtful for a moment.

“Do you have a problem working with him?”

“No!” Jyn answered, much too quickly, and clenched her jaw to fight back the embarrassment threatening to rise. “I work with him often. I was only… wondering.”

Leia — who in many ways was exceptionally shrewd and insightful — was either too distracted or simply didn’t care enough about other people’s drama to pick up on Jyn’s very poorly-concealed discomfort. “No, I don’t think they’d send anyone else. They might have sent Vash, since he defected from Kuat and knew a lot about ships, but he died over Scarif.”

She tossed Jyn another dress, this one pale purple and gauzy, but also thankfully modest in its cut. Considering that most of Leia’s wardrobe was what she had taken with her from Alderaan, and had been either bought by her parents or tailor-made for her with their money, it sort of made sense that she didn’t have anything risqué in the depths of her closet. Jyn thanked every star, god, and spirit she had ever heard of for that.

“We’ll have to alter these some,” Leia said, laying out another few outfits and frowning. “I think the quartermaster can do that, or at least connect you to someone who can.”

“I’ll just ask the nearest surgeon,” Jyn muttered flippantly, but Leia actually seemed to consider it.

“Start with Taryn,” she said. “She learned medicine on an outer rim world, in a little city that didn’t have access to bacta, and her stitches are _perfect_.”

“I was joking.”

Leia gave her a blank look. “I wasn’t,” she replied bluntly. “Nobody on this ship has only one specialty. She’ll probably be happy to sew up something that can’t scream.”

All told, Leia sent her off with two arms-full of random articles of clothing, mostly dresses and skirts, but with at least one satin robe (“Never worn,” she had added darkly), an over-elaborate nightdress that looked like it belonged on a doll (“You can lose that if you want.”) and a thigh-holster designed to conceal a small weapon beneath most skirts (“I want that back.”)

She had also included a hastily hand-written guide to cosmetics, which was penned on flimsi in Leia’s beautiful, elegant, and nearly-unreadable calligraphy, as well as a catalogue that she had found underneath all her old clothes that had pages and pages of various hairstyles. Jyn had asked how she was supposed to do all of those by herself, and Leia had pointed out a few less-intense options, then thought about it and suggested that she come up with a story about being in mourning, or something, to explain why her hair was so short.

(Until that exact moment, Jyn had not actually considered her hair _short_.)

To her deep chagrin, she wasn’t quite back to her bunk when she ran into Cassian — who, it appeared, had been looking for her. He seemed about to speak, but changed tack and instead opened the door for her so she could stumble inside and throw all the clothes onto her bed; she took a second to brush her hair back from her face and try to look like this was completely normal.

“You’ve already spoken with General Draven, then?” he said, and Jyn took a deep, _deep_ breath that totally failed to calm her. Professionalism was key.

“Haven't gotten through all the brief yet, but yes,” she replied, rifling through the dresses for the outfits most in-need of tailoring, and studiously ignored the look on Cassian’s face as he gingerly picked up the frilly nightdress. “Corulag, yeah?”

“Yes,” he said slowly, still staring at the dress, then looked from it to her and back. She snatched it away from him and threw it aside, narrowly missing the garbage chute. “The Expo is a four-day convention in Curamelle, run by Sienar Research.”

“Sienar…” she repeated, trying to recall where she’d heard the name before today. “That’s TIE fighters, right?”

Cassian nodded. “There will be an entire wing devoted to small craft innovation.”

“Any clue what kinds of checks we’ll come up against?” she asked seriously, now fully-focused as she pulled up her copy of the brief. “And is there any reason we can’t use the Sward alias? It’s already established, and that’ll save me some headache.”

It really would — for her own identity, she was going to have to not only draw up scandocs but also forge records from a non-existent past, so it didn’t look like she had materialized out of the black. Considering that the security was likely to be extremely tight, it would have to be perfect, and while the convention started in ten standard days, the deadline to sign up was in three. She sighed internally as she mapped out the volume of work ahead of her; the more she thought about it, the less she cared about dresses and sleeping arrangements.

“Sward isn’t very well-connected,” he replied. “His credentials won’t get us in, but the identity itself is solid.”

“Credentials aren’t my concern,” she said absently. “Send me everything you’ve got on him.”

“I will,” he said. “What will your cover be?”

She twitched, coming uncomfortably back to the present.

May as well get it over with.

“It looks like Joreth Sward and his new trophy wife will be the easiest way in,” she replied, focusing on setting up a new template for the documents. “I was _going_ to go with business partners looking to invest in new tech,” she added, feeling vaguely as if she should apologize, “but Leia made a good point that you don’t really see a lot of Imperial businesswomen. Trophy wife will be less conspicuous.”

“Okay,” he said, matter-of-fact, as though it meant nothing to him. Jyn wasn’t sure exactly how to react to that, so she decided not to. There were more important things to focus on right now anyway. “Let me know what you need.”

She cast an eye over the clothes on the bed thoughtfully. “Where would Sward have met his wife?”

Cassian shrugged. “I mostly use him in the mid-rim,” he replied, and Jyn glanced up at him.

“Name a planet.”

“Takodana,” he offered, after a moment’s thought, and she nodded, then paused and looked up at him — she’d spent a year in Takodana as Liana Hallik before being arrested, and knew the planet well, or at least the city of Andui, which would make it a good candidate for her alias’s homeworld. She knew he had been in charge of the mission that broke her out of Wobani, and had always suspected that he was the one who had tracked her down in the first place, but had never been able to find proof or get him to admit it outright.

“I’ve spent some time there,” she said slowly, and he appeared entirely unfazed.

“Have you.”

“You knew that already.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and after a long moment, the ghost of a smile crossed over his face. “Do you want me to send your file along with Joreth Sward’s?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’m curious how you tracked me down.”

“You’re memorable,” he answered without hesitation, but didn’t elaborate.

She peered at him for another moment, trying to figure out what, exactly, she was supposed to read in that statement, before turning her attention back to the datapad. “Well, I’ve got less than three days to make a person from scratch, so if there’s anything you can do with Sward’s file before sending it to me, I would really appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry about Sward,” he said, easing back out the door. “I’ll find out what security we’ll be up against and forward it to you when I have something concrete.”

“Good,” she replied. “Thanks.”

He gave her a quick, fleeting smile, which was almost — but not quite — sincere enough to hide something that crossed over his face. The expression had passed so quickly she hadn’t been able to identify it, except that it wasn’t positive.

Before she could ask, the door slid shut and he was gone.

.

Draven hadn’t actually said, in so many words, that he and Jyn would be undercover as a couple; in fact, he’d told Cassian that he offloaded the work of crafting the covers to Jyn, because she was highly skilled at forging, and because the people in Intelligence who used to do that job had mostly died six months ago on or above Scarif.

But it had been an undertone, nevertheless: multi-day convention, lots of hobnobbing with the unscrupulous rich in a high-security facility, the need to be able to spend a lot of time together without raising suspicion. Cassian would have preferred to go alone, or with Kay if they could ever get him running again, but Command wanted to get into Imperial systems and copy schematics of whatever new tricks they were coming up with to replace the Death Star, and while Cassian was a decent slicer, he wasn’t _that_ good.

Getting into and out of Imperial computer systems had been one of Jyn’s primary jobs as a Partisan, however, which made her ideal — if not the only person suited — for the task.

He hated it.

Going undercover onto Corulag at a high-security convention was so insanely risky it bordered on suicide. Mothma had almost shot down the mission entirely because of that, but it had been pointed out that _not_ having a finger on the pulse of Imperial weapons development had led them to discover the Death Star mere _days_ before it would have wiped them all out. And isolated out on the flagship, deep in the black near wild space, they were woefully disconnected from anything that might warn them of a coming threat. 

There was safety in the black, off the hyperspace lanes and drifting between star systems — you were damn near _impossible_ to find, unless someone already knew where to look, and you were only using fuel for life support systems, so you always had reserves — but being out here made them blind.

They _needed_ to know what the Empire was up to, and while Han Solo and the Pathfinders could bring them back all sorts of gossip from the outer rim and the underbelly of the galaxy, there was no heading anything off by doing that. It was the same way that Cassian had tracked the Death Star, and it had _barely_ been enough, and even then only because of Bodhi. They needed more.

He knew all of this, knew why it was necessary, and why it was necessary to send Jyn, but he absolutely despised everything about it anyway, from start to finish.

Draven had already given him a second lullaby pill, to give to her.

He _hated_ it.

Cassian could die for the Rebellion, had always figured that he would, and he was prepared to, if captured, break the capsule; he was _not_ prepared to watch Jyn do it.

It burned in his pocket the entire time he was speaking to her, and she — she _was_ taking it seriously, focused on getting their covers in order and drafting perfect scandocs to get them past security, but at the same time it was like she wasn’t really _thinking_ about the danger they would be in. It wasn’t _quite_ as dangerous as Scarif, but they would be alone in the Core without backup and no one to call for help. If they got caught — well, Jyn _had_ to get out.

The truth was, Cassian wasn’t strictly necessary for the mission; Jyn would be doing all the heavy lifting, with him there to run support and interference. His job was to get Jyn into the facility, make sure she retrieved the information without being caught, and get her back out.

His survival was neither required nor guaranteed.

Still, Draven wanted her to have a lullaby pill, just in case everything completely failed and Cassian wasn’t able to save her.

He _fucking_ hated it.

It ate away at him, even as he sent the files and began looking into Sienar Research, so much that he couldn’t stand to be alone in his room with it. The mess hall was nearly abandoned at this hour, but there was enough background noise to sort of drown out his thoughts, if he was careful and stayed focused. The downside was, when he was so focused on his work —

“Troubled, Captain?”

— he wasn’t focused on his surroundings. 

He managed to conceal his surprise as Chirrut sat down across from him, although he wondered why he bothered. “Where’s Baze?” he asked.

Chirrut tilted his head. “Asleep,” he replied, and then, pointedly: “As most sentients should be at this point in the night cycle.”

“So why are you awake?”

“Your turmoil bleeds into the Force,” he answered, before shrugging. “And I wasn’t asleep to begin with.”

“My turmoil, huh?” Cassian repeated, but didn’t press. “I’m busy.”

“Busy trying not to think, I would guess.” He must have sensed Cassian glaring at him, because his expression softened. “Counsel may help.”

“Unless you can tell me about Imperial security in the Core,” he replied, with some bite, “I don’t think I’m in need of your assistance.”

“New mission?”

“Classified.”

It wasn’t — or, it wasn’t _so_ classified that Chirrut couldn’t be told the basics — but one of the few benefits, on-base, of being a spy was being able to declare anything he didn’t want to discuss or disclose as classified information, and have it go unchallenged.

Except that Chirrut was notoriously difficult to lie to.

“Is that so?” he asked, folding his hands over the top of his staff. “Or do you just not want to talk about it?”

“Does it make a difference?”

Chirrut didn’t respond, which was almost worse than if he’d continued to push; instead, he seemed content to sit in the nearly-empty mess hall, listening to some unlucky grunts finishing up the washing in the cramped kitchen behind them, apparently doing nothing whatsoever except sitting across from Cassian and wasting time. It was a tried-and-true tactic: open up a silence and wait for the other person to fill it.

He sort of _did_ want to talk about it, which was still such a new impulse that his entire being recoiled whenever it happened — all his life, he’d been independent, with little to no emotional support, and had never especially felt the need to confide in anyone else, no matter how upset or troubled he had been. But since Scarif…

Since Scarif, he had found himself, occasionally, trading stories with Bodhi about learning to fly in an old ski speeder, and telling Baze little details like his father’s name or the fact that he’d once had a sister, and admitting to Chirrut when he was bothered by something, and — and always, _always_ wanting to talk to Jyn, to see her smile. It was like all the human connections that he’d never had before were calling in all their debts at once.

Chirrut wouldn’t be able to help, and he wouldn’t be able to give him any advice, and he wouldn’t have anything to say that Cassian didn’t already know, but the urge to open up about it was strong, all the same.

He stood sharply and gathered up his datapad and notes.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said, and left Chirrut sitting there, still waiting to help him.

.

No matter what else Cassian may or may not have been, he sure as hell was _prompt —_  within ten minutes of leaving her room, both Joreth Sward’s and her own file were on her datapad. She had wondered if he would edit it, but there was no way he’d had the time, unless he’d, for some unfathomable reason, edited it before she even asked to see it.

She’d set her curiosity aside and focused on getting all the details from Sward’s file in-line with Katya’s, where necessary. It was a thorough, if simple, cover: Joreth didn’t have a very active social life, his records showed a history of keeping to himself, and traveling a lot with his job. He had a rather-full credit account (she wondered if they were Cassian’s, or if they’d been provided by someone like Bail) and seemed to check in at many more stations and planets than Cassian could possibly have kept up with on his own. They must have had some system worked out, so that there weren’t any huge, unexplained absences in his activity, although how he kept track of it along with everything else he had on his plate escaped her.

No wonder he always looked so tired. He was juggling multiple different personalities to keep them active and unburned, even when he was stuck on-base. Kay had probably helped, before Scarif, but they still hadn’t been able to find a chassis that would support his data, so until they did, it was just… Cassian, on his own, trying to be several people all over the galaxy and burning himself completely out.

(She’d made up her mind to tell Chirrut about this after the mission, so they could all gang up on him and force him to accept help.)

It took almost twenty solid hours to work up the covers to her own satisfaction, before she was willing to forward them to Cassian to give them a once-over, _before_ they would be able to submit them to Draven for approval, then actually register for the event.

Cassian, who apparently never slept, had responded to her within an hour saying that he’d corrected a small discrepancy, and sent it on to Draven.

(Her own file, which she’d pulled up and begun scanning while waiting for a response from Cassian, was… utilitarian. There wasn’t much information about _who_ she was, so much as where she’d been seen, people who recalled speaking to her, aliases that shared her image, police reports filed for her and warrants for her arrest. His comment that she was memorable made sense: apparently more people recalled her than she would have guessed, with bits and pieces of conversations she hardly remembered, and at least one barfly who, according to the slightly-irritated note, “would not shut up about her eyes”. She’d half-expected a personality profile, but if one had been compiled for her, it wasn’t included in the personnel file he'd sent.

It was a little eerie, to see how he’d traced her steps and rooted her out, and how _quickly —_  the first date, where he’d made the connection between Saw’s Jyn Erso and Tanith Ponta, was less than a standard week before she’d been sprung from Wobani. She had _thought_ she’d done a much better job covering her tracks than that.)

With the covers handled, and registration being taken care of by Draven, the next step was to become Katya Sward, née Torsin, of Andui, Takodana.

Nobody was less enthused about it than Bodhi, who had a couple days medical leave after a minor mishap on a recent mission with the newly-minted Rogue squadron; since he had a sprained ankle and thus literally couldn’t escape, Jyn had cornered him after breakfast and roped him into helping her not screw everything up by being herself.

“There is… just… way too much going on here,” he said, as Jyn tried to figure out how to put on one of Leia’s more-extravagant dresses. The registration form had said that there would be a formal “social gathering” on the second day of the convention, although she was reasonably sure that she wouldn’t be expected to dance. Leia had agreed, saying that it was probably just an excuse to drink and network.

“I can’t even figure out where my head goes,” she sighed, and he reached out, gesturing for her to hand it to him so he could try and figure out how it was supposed to go. “There are too many holes in this thing.”

“It’s the most elaborate dress she gave you,” he replied, then seemed to catch on. “Oh, it’s got open shoulders, that’s — that’s why.”

“ _Oh_ ,” she said, and now that he was holding it up, it made sense as a garment, even if she still wasn’t enthusiastic about the cut. “Who designed this?”

Bodhi shrugged. “It reminds me of — of these old holodramas we used to watch, from the Old Republic.”

“They wore things like this?”

“Worse,” he replied, and made a gesture around his head as though drawing a circle around it. “The headdresses that they — well, there’s no way anyone could walk around with them. We used to make fun of them,” he added, as though drifting into a memory.

She let him, while attempting to wrestle the dress on over her head, but by the time she had realized that the collar detached and she was supposed to step into it, he had come back to the present, looking troubled.

“You know,” he said slowly, “this is a… really dangerous mission.”

“I’m aware,” she replied through gritted teeth, struggling to get the bust up over her hips and then wondering how in all the actual hells she was supposed to get it back off once she had.

“No, I mean — I mean, _really_ dangerous.”

“I know.”

“I mean —”

“Bodhi, I _know_ ,” she snapped, finally getting it on properly and shaking out the wrinkles. It… actually looked quite nice, which irritated her somewhat on principle, but the elegant satin and soft colors made her look… well, like someone she wasn’t, but might have been, in another life. It was hard to see the scars against the pale fabric. “This isn’t the first _really dangerous_ mission I’ve been on. In my experience,” she added, adjusting the high, ornate collar and sheer overlay, “worrying about how dangerous it is when you ought to be preparing for it is how you get yourself killed.”

He only made a worried-sounding _hmm_ in response. “You look lovely,” he said instead, and she frowned at her face in the mirror, tugging at her hair. “Yeah, you won’t be able to get away with your bun in that.”

“What do you know about hair?”

“That it grows on human bodies and comes in many colors,” he replied, then paused, thoughtful. “And how to braid it.”

“You didn’t, you know, have any brilliant little sisters whose unruly hair you used to dress up when you were younger because you were their beloved big brother?”

“No, and that was weirdly specific,” he answered, then thought for a moment. “That’s from something, isn't it?”

“Some old Republic holodrama I saw in a bar once,” she muttered, which was true but also belied the fact that she knew exactly what the title was and which character that had been — the big brother had spent a lot of time and credits to rescue his little sister from the evil government, and they’d joined a smuggler’s crew to escape the law. She had quite liked it. The theme of family — both blood and found — who would sacrifice everything for one another had resonated with her.

She fought through the fabric of the skirt to see if she could retrieve the hidden blaster, determinedly ignoring the way Bodhi snorted when she did. It worked, which was all that mattered — if things had gone so poorly that she was reaching for a concealed blaster, dignity and grace would not be among her top priorities.

“You — you may do better to just leave it down,” he said, and she glanced at him, to see that he had picked up the catalogue of hairstyles and was rifling through it with an expression of growing alarm. “Cut it a little shorter,” he went on, with a vague gesture, “go with the mourning angle. Didn’t you say your character’s parents died recently?”

“Yeah,” she replied, tugging her hair out of its bun and running her fingers through it in an attempt to make it look less like… well, like she’d just pulled it out of the bun it had been in since this morning. She had little success. “Three standard months ago.”

He nodded. “You should definitely cut a few more inches off of it, then,” he said. “It’ll get you out of having to do all these styles, and it looks like you… um, haven’t cut it in a long time, anyway.”

_Not since before Wobani_ , she thought. Most of a year, and it looked it. “Do we even _have_ people who cut hair on-board?” she asked, although it didn’t much matter — she’d been doing it herself for over a decade. Still, she imagined that Katya would have had someone to cut her hair for her.

“I think mostly people just, um, get scissors and hope for the best,” he answered, then made a noise of dismay as she began rooting through her nightstand for one of her sharp knives. “Not in a _formal dress_ , you _sand slug_.”

“I wasn’t gonna take a knife to my hair _right now_ ,” she snapped. “I was just getting them out,” she added in a dark mutter. “They need sharpening anyway.”

Bodhi made a sound of disbelief, which she ignored.

“You’re not gonna have to dance or anything, right?” he asked, and Jyn made a face.

“Hopefully not,” she replied. “Even if they do make me, I have a good excuse for not knowing how.”

“I’m sure Cassian knows,” he mused, which gave her pause. He’d done a lot of undercover work, but considering how much of a perfectionist he was being with regards to the mission — even more than Jyn, and almost to the point of being obnoxious — she had assumed that little to none of it had been in the Core, let alone high society.

“Why do you think that?” she asked slowly. He shrugged.

“It — it just seems like something a spy would know,” he answered, sounding a bit embarrassed. “And he — he has all sorts of weird skills, I just… sort of assumed.”

Unbidden, the thought of dancing with Cassian, in this flowy and distinctly un-Jyn-like dress, landed in her brain. It was… unsettling, but not repulsive.

She blinked rapidly for several seconds, trying to displace it, then shook her head.

“I’m not doing any dancing,” she said firmly, and Bodhi shrugged again, giving her a little _okay_ , before turning to the next dress, the gauzy lilac one.

“We’ve got a _lot_ of these to get through,” he sighed, and tossed it to her.

.

_Mr. and Mrs. Sward,_  
  
_Thank you for registering to attend Sienar Research’s Technological Development Expo at Curamelle!_  
  
_Included in this missive is your unique, one-time access code to land in our private docks, as well as your room assignment, an itinerary of the weekend’s panels and events, and a map of the convention space. We request that you arrive promptly at the time given to you with the access code, and register immediately upon arrival to receive your temporary keys and ID cards, which we request you carry on your person at all times. If you are required to leave the convention center for any reason during your stay, you will be required to return these materials to the director of guest services, and will not be allowed to rejoin the conference, nor will you receive a refund._

_While the purpose of the convention is innovation and investment in intragalactic defense, we at Sienar Research believe that business and pleasure should not be mutually exclusive. In this spirit, your long weekend will be one of luxury and relaxation, with a member of our hospitality team assigned to attend to your every need, and you will have access to all of the convention’s amenities, including our spectacular rooftop bar, gaming floor, and spa._  
  
_We look forward to meeting you and working together in the future to shine the light of our great Empire on all the galaxy._

Jyn frowned, reading over the letter and pulling up the attached files. One-time access code, temporary keys, no returning if they left, ID cards they had to keep on them, and, perhaps worst of all, a Sienar droid assigned to be their servant. There was no question that the servant would report on any suspicious happenings, too, which would make frank conversation difficult.

She forwarded the letter to Cassian, with an attached, _what do you think?_ but it was more than an hour and a half later before he responded, and when he did, all it said was:

_We need to be careful_.

She stared at the message, becoming more and more disquieted the more she looked at it. Almost two hours, and he sends a five-word reply? No comment on what the letter implied about security or how they might go about dealing with it? It was late in the day, but not so late that he could have been asleep, and she knew for a fact that this mission was his top priority; he had nothing to do _except_ prepare for it, and anyway, if he’d been busy, he would have shot off an immediate reply saying as much.

She thought of the fleeting darkness when he'd left her room right after they'd received the assignment, and tapped thoughtfully on the words on her screen, before composing a new message and sending it before she could second-guess herself —  _What aren’t you telling me?_

There was another long pause, maybe fifteen minutes, before he finally responded, but all he said was, _We’ll talk_.

“You’re damn right we will,” she muttered to herself, tossing the datapad onto her cot and opening the door to march right over to his room and demand an explanation… and ran almost fully into Leia and an unfamiliar Twi’lek woman, who was less graceful than the princess and fell against the wall hard. “Oh, shi— I’m sorry,” she gasped, helping the woman to stand.

“Jyn,” Leia said, in the sort of tone that said she was simply going to un-see what had just happened, “this is Taryn, I mentioned her to you a few days ago. She’s agreed to alter my dresses so that they fit you. Unless you were busy?”

The tone of the last bit made it clear that no lie would be accepted.

“No,” she replied tightly, taking a step back to let Leia and Taryn into her room. “Now is a perfect time.”

.

Cassian had been both suspicious and relieved when Jyn didn’t show up at his door after his last message. He had no idea what to say to her, how to broach the topic, and —

How could she read him when she couldn’t even _see_ him?

She’d never responded, either, which he wasn’t naive enough to think meant that she had simply accepted it.

(He’d tried, between receiving her question and settling on the non-answer, to come up with some way to tell her about the lullaby pill, but he had a nearly-physical reaction to the very thought, and couldn’t even think of a sentence that contained the words without feeling like his insides had vanished.)

Late the following afternoon, about sixteen standard hours before they would leave the flagship for Takodana, Cassian was in the mess hall with Luke, Han, Chirrut, and Baze, staring at a tray of food he _deeply_ didn’t want, and still going over all the little details they would need to account for while Chirrut explained some sort of Force philosophy to Luke, when Bodhi crashed (literally) into the seat beside Luke with an under-the-breath curse and heavy sigh.

“Long day?” Baze asked, handing over a roll that he’d saved for the pilot. Bodhi took it, shaking his head.

“You have _no_ idea,” he replied, mouth full of bread. “But I think it’ll pay off.”

“What will pay off?” Cassian asked, and Bodhi swallowed hard.

“Jyn,” he said. (Cassian ignored the spike in his heart rate at her name.) “We’ve been — uh, going over how to look the, you know, the part, with Leia. I think she’ll do fine, if she doesn’t kill us all first.”

Cassian didn’t hear her walking up behind him, but he couldn’t miss the surprised, appreciative look on Solo’s face. “You cut your hair,” he said, a bit dumbly, and both Cassian and Baze turned.

Sure enough, she had cut her hair, and significantly — it was now right around chin-length, and looked like she’d either been in the wind or been running her fingers through it, and… it was a good look for her.

It was less good for Cassian, who until that exact moment had been so focused on the getting the details perfect that he hadn’t really _thought_ about the fact that they would be sharing a room and, indeed, a bed, for four days while pretending to be a recently-married couple. He’d done similar missions before, but not for as long or with as strict security, and not with a… Jyn. Or anyone like Jyn.

(Not that he had ever met anyone like Jyn before. Which was, come to think of it, the crux of several issues.)

“You look beautiful,” Baze said, matter-of-fact. Jyn grunted in vague thanks, and gestured for Cassian to move over so she could take a seat.

“You’ve been learning how to be a “lady” from Leia?” Luke asked, sounding amused, and Jyn rolled her eyes.

“She can walk in heels, and knows which fork to eat with,” she grumbled, glaring down at her tray, even after Cassian had placed the roll he’d saved for her on it. “I’ll be glad when this is over.”

“It may be miserable now,” Chirrut said seriously, “but if it keeps you and the Captain safe, it will be time well spent.”

“She’s complaining a lot,” Bodhi chimed in, mouth full again, “but she’s really not bad at it.”

“Why did you cut your hair?” Cassian asked, then immediately regretted doing so. “It — Imperial women usually have long hair,” he added hastily, in a failed attempt to justify himself. If it bothered Jyn, she didn’t let on.

“Yeah, longer than mine was,” she answered, sighing and tearing piece of the roll off. “And they do a lot of fancy styles that I can’t do on my own. It seemed easier.”

“Oh,” he replied, fighting the urge to cringe, and gave what he hoped was a careless-looking shrug. “It looks good.”

“Thank you,” she said flatly.

Cassian had managed not to cringe, but Luke either couldn’t hide it or didn’t bother to, shooting him a clear _that’s rough, buddy_ expression that he determined to ignore.

“When will you be back?” Baze asked, and Cassian glanced up at him, glad for the distraction.

“You know I can’t give you details,” he replied, and Baze made a sound of vague disapproval, then turned to Jyn.

“When will you be back?” he repeated, making Bodhi snicker. Jyn didn’t look at Cassian before responding. 

“Hopefully within a week,” she answered. “Depends on how good we are at convincing them we’re newlyweds.”

“Sounds… _hard_ ,” Han interjected, with a smirk and deliberate emphasis on _hard_. Bodhi choked on his drink, Luke snorted, and even Chirrut seemed amused, but Cassian was currently far too high-strung for jokes he very much _did not want_ to think about, and Jyn was apparently in no mood for humor.

“Yes,” she replied coldly. “It _will_ be difficult.”

“Relax,” Baze said, shifting in his seat and cutting Han off before he could, presumably, apologize. “You call too much attention if you’re nervous.”

“People will help you convince them,” Chirrut added seriously. “Act natural.”

“Natural?” Jyn repeated, incredulous. “This is not exactly my _specialty_. What does that even look like?”

“This,” Baze replied, with a gesture to himself and Chirrut. “Sit by each other, enjoy each other’s presence. You don’t need to be obscene to be convincing.”

“In fact, you will be more convincing if you aren’t,” Chirrut went on, picking up the thread but evidently not Cassian’s increasing discomfort. “Know that you have your entire lives to love each other, and need not be attached at all times.”

“Also, um…” Luke started, motioning with his fork at Jyn and Cassian, “not to be… _that_ guy, but… you kind of already come off as married.”

Cassian wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but the dangerous tilt to Jyn’s head suggested that she had some choice ideas; luckily, Chirrut was _fast_.

“As I said,” he cut in, “people will help you to convince them. They will assume that you are lovers unless you give them reason to believe otherwise.”

_And on that note_ , he thought, and pushed himself up from the table. “I have work to do before we leave,” he said, determinedly not looking at Jyn, although he could almost feel her glaring at him.

Sure enough, by the time he got back to his room, a message from her was already up on his datapad —  _what happened to we’ll talk? —_  and he ran his hand over his face. If this was how this mission was going to start, then it was going to be rough.

He sent back another message. _When we leave, on the way to Takodana_.

She didn’t reply.

.

“There you are,” Bodhi said, catching her on her way to the airlock; most of her — well, Katya Sward’s — things were already loaded, except for her own personal bag with things like the holster and her mother’s necklace. She had no idea if they’d be scanning luggage, but she didn’t want to have to explain her personal effects to some Imp or droid if they did.

She pulled the strap of her back up higher on her shoulder. “Yeah, sorry, I had to speak to Leia for a moment.”

Bodhi looked unsettled, and took a deep breath, before stepping forward and pulling her into a hug that she, after a moment’s surprise, returned. Now close up to her shoulder, he murmured, “No one’s gonna stop us.”

Jyn clenched her jaw. This argument hadn’t gotten them anywhere last night after Cassian had left — of course, they had waited until he wasn’t there to shut them all down — and wasn’t going to be getting them anywhere today. Even if it might have, she was out of time; it was up to Leia now, to prevent them from doing anything incredibly stupid.

“Stay safe up there,” he said, a bit louder, as he pulled away from the hug.

“We will,” she replied, and at the troubled look on his face, deflated a little. “Bodhi, we _will_. Cassian knows what he’s doing undercover, and we’ve been preparing nonstop all week. Relax.”

He made a face and then shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not… gonna relax. Sorry?” he added, with little actual apology.

“We’ll be back before you know it,” she said, and he only frowned in response. “Bodhi, it’s less dangerous than Scarif.”

“That’s not a high bar,” he countered hotly. “We _barely_ made it off Scarif. Just…” he trailed off for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Just promise me you’ll both come back, all right?” he said quietly. “I… I don’t have many people left.”

Jyn opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again and nodded. “We’ll come back. Both of us. I swear — I swear on my mother’s grave, Bodhi.”

He nodded a couple of times, but didn’t look particularly comforted. She supposed that there was only so far a promise could go. 

“Radio in once you get back into real space out here,” he said quietly. “I’m not going on any missions at least for the next ten days or so, I’ll be here.”

“I will,” she replied, and gave him another quick hug before ducking away, toward the hangar.

Cassian was already on the shuttle, and he only glanced up when she stalked up the ramp and tossed her bag onto the little bench. “Ready to go?” he asked, tone dangerously neutral.

She took a deep, calming breath; the good thing, the _good_ thing, about being annoyed with him over whatever he was hiding, was that it made her feel less awkward about how very personal their next several days were going to be.

(A servant droid assigned to them… hopefully that wouldn’t mean they’d need to feign… certain activities. Every time the thought came into her head — and it had done so much more than was reasonable during the past week — she could practically _feel_ her brain recoiling in mortification.) 

(It was small in the scheme of things, and hardly the most pressing issue or threat, but the idea of having to fake an orgasm in the presence of Cassian Andor short-circuited her very soul. He didn’t seem to be having the same problem.)

“All aboard,” she replied. He shot her a quick, insincere smile and closed the ramp as she walked up to the cockpit and took the co-pilot’s seat.

She had just about run through her reserves of patience with this… whatever it was that he was doing. Acting like they were strangers, avoiding her questions, almost like he was ashamed of something — but if he was still ashamed around her, after everything they had been through, then…

As soon as they hit hyperspace, she stood up and crossed her arms.

“All right,” she declared. “We’re _officially_ on our way to Takodana. Talk.”

He glanced down at the floor, almost like he’d been afraid of this, then let out a long, slow breath, right hand clenching and un-clenching. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, he pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to her, without ever looking at her.

She took it, confused: it was a tiny, sealed envelope, large enough only to hold a mini data chip or a tablet of —

Oh.

Bodhi’s words floated up in her mind, _this is a really dangerous mission_.

Of course. It… made sense. In fact, it made so much sense that she wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to her earlier. But then… Saw had never put much stock in these sorts of things, when everyone was always armed and undercover missions never lasted longer than the time it took to plant a bomb.

Not entirely sure how to respond, she settled on pragmatism. “How am I supposed to hide this in a fancy dress?” she asked, and he turned sharply, expression unreadable. She blinked. “I’m supposed to keep it on me, yeah? Well, I don’t have pockets or a cute handbag.”

He seemed taken off-guard. “You can… pin it to an undergarment,” he replied haltingly. She made a face.

“Then I can’t get to it if I _do_ need it,” she muttered, rummaging through her bag until she found the holster she’d borrowed from Leia. “Not that I plan to need it,” she added under her breath.

“No one ever _plans_ to need them,” Cassian said, somewhat harshly, and she glanced up at him.

“I prefer not to have an alternative to success,” she countered, sitting back on her heels. He stared at her blankly for a few seconds, as if she had totally lost him somewhere in the past few minutes.

“You should always plan for mission failure.”

“I do,” she replied coolly. “I’ve already plotted out two different escape routes just from the map, when we get there I’ll take a look at security and refine them. Also…” she started, and then stopped herself, wondering if she really ought to tell him; it wasn’t for nothing that they’d done it behind his back, after all. His eyes narrowed at the pause.

“Also?” he repeated, and she sighed.

(There were worse crimes.)

“I told them not to,” she admitted, turning back to the holster, “but Chirrut and Luke both swore that if we hadn’t gotten back within a week, they’d come get us,” she said, then shook her head. “I mentioned it to Leia, so she might stop them if they try, but you know how Skywalker is.”

“If we fail, and they try to get into the Core…” he started, but she held up a hand.

“Trust me, I tried to talk them out of it, but then Han got involved, and he swears that he can break through any blockade.”

Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose as if struggling to ward off a headache, which was pretty much his default reaction to anything involving Han Solo. “That is not how any of this works.”

“It does now,” Jyn said, finally getting the little envelope into a stable position in the holster and standing up. “Maybe it didn’t before, but you’re not working alone anymore.”

He growled in frustration. “No one else was supposed to even have the details of this mission. Who told them?”

“Bodhi,” she answered, tilting her head. “And I told him, because I needed help. We’re a team, Cassian.”

“And just when did Han Solo join our _team?_ ”

“When Luke did,” she replied. “Don’t stress yourself out over it. Let’s just do it right, and none of this will matter.”

“It _matters_ ,” he hissed, looking genuinely angry. “Now instead of endangering two people, we’re endangering _seven_.”

She strode forward, irritated, and jammed a finger into his chest. “Not if we do our jobs, we aren’t. You’re overreacting, _Captain_.”

He met her eyes and a strange, almost anguished, expression flickered on his face. She hesitated, searching for clues in his eyes, the silence laying heavy in her head.

Maybe Cassian had always worked alone for more than simply secrecy.

“Like it or not, you’re not protecting anyone by shutting them out,” she said quietly. “I should know.”

The moment lingered just a little too long, and it occurred to her just a little too late that she was still touching his chest. She pulled her hand back sharply, shattering the atmosphere so completely that it was practically audible.

He wasn’t looking at her face anymore.

“We’re only a couple hours out from Takodana, right?” she asked, more to the air than to him, and tried not to wince at the strain in her voice.

“Yes,” he replied woodenly. “We should arrive about 2200, local time. A ship should be waiting for us, under your alias’s name.”

So, once they left the shuttle, they would have to be Joreth and Katya, and preferably be seen making their final arrangements to leave. It wouldn't be documented anywhere when they had come into Takodana, because nobody recorded Takodana’s traffic; as long as their ship could be traced back there if anyone checked (and, considering where they were going, it paid to assume that someone would), their story should remain solid. Mothma herself had made contact with whoever had made their arrangements in Andui, and both she and Draven had said that the agent’s loyalty was without question — according to Cassian, it was a “Fulcrum agent”, whatever that meant, exactly.

Assuming they weren't mistaken about the agent, even if everything went sideways, they still couldn't be traced back to the base.

…assuming, also, that if everything did go sideways, Han “Did Not Think This Through” Solo wouldn’t fly straight from the flagship to Corulag. He was good at getting past Imperial blockades and checks, but he was also notoriously reckless, and he’d have more than one back-spaceship driver pushing him forward.

It was nice, that they cared, but Cassian wasn’t exactly wrong to be frustrated by it.

“Well,” she started, trying to cover up the awkwardness that had descended with flippancy, “there's not much we can do from here. You want first watch, or me?”

“I'll stay on the bridge,” he replied, almost too fast, then seemed to stifle a cough. “Get some rest.”

She nodded and escaped the cockpit, letting out a long breath as soon as she was in the little makeshift bedroom.

 


End file.
